From Hire to Liar: The Role of Deception in the Workplace

Deception occurs in every workplace, to some degree. Employees deceive their bosses, peers, subordinates, customers, competitors, regulators, and various other people during the course of their work lives. Organizational sociologists occasionally address such behavior, usually as a form of 'deviance, ' but few social scientists have studied deception as a normal feature of work worthy of study in its own right. David Shulman's book is an important exception. Drawing on Goffman's 'dramaturgical' perspective and two in-depth case studies, he take a close look at both 'official' and 'unofficial' workplace deception and the conditions that create and sustain it. One hopes that Shulman's book will inspire sociologists to study deception beyond the workplace and behind the symbolic interactionist perspective. We might consider, for example, a sociological approach to deception that would apply Donald Black's general theory of social life and focus on the 'social structure of the lie.' This approach would direct our attention to the relative status of the principals, the degree of social distance between the principals, and the status of any third parties and their relationships to the principals and among themselves.

David Shulman does a masterful job of addressing the diversity and roots of workplace deception, from the white lies told to grease social interaction to the institutionalized whoppers that organizations foist on the public. Shulman deftly conveys the taken-for-granted quality of many deceptions, where individuals and organizations alike seem to view work as a game to be won and workplace ethics are a distant cousin of personal ethics.

Lies, white lies, misinformation, prevarications, falsehoods, cover-ups, smoke screens, euphemisms, dissimulations--in compelling detail, David Shulman demonstrates that these are not just deplorable outcomes created by dishonest people. Rather, deception in some form is an essential feature of social life and organizational functioning. This wonderful and insightful book is a pleasure to read.

David Shulman has written a first-rate study of the perpetration, culture, and management of lying in the workplace. Not since Goffman has there been such an insightful study of the varieties and functionality of social deception. From Hire to Liar will become the benchmark against which future sociological research on the practice and consequences of human deception will be judged.